I second that.  If your main motivating factor is performance, Linux is the way to go.  I too run a dual boot Linux/OSX system on my 2nd notebook, and have found Pd patches running in linux to run with much less cpu load than OSX.  If you choose to use JACK instead of Portaudio on OSX, you can reduce their cpu load significantly (fyi, JACK isn't yet compatible with 10.5).  The Mac/Linux system is probably the best of both worlds + you can satisfy your OS X package needs with Darwinports (which rocks). 

As for windows, haven't used it for audio since 1999 and don't intend on going back.

Do you have any other main considerations besides price and performance when looking for a new machine?

~Brandon


On Dec 27, 2007, at 6:44 PM, Derek Holzer wrote:

Hi Mike,

Mike McGonagle wrote:
Hello all,

I was wondering if anyone has done any sort of "Platform" comparisons? I
am in the market for a new machine, and was just wondering if there were
any performance comparions for the various platforms for which PD is
available.

More than enough stuff in the archives about this. My take:

I don't know anything about Windows, haven't touched it since 2002. I do
find that quite a bit of PD is either optimized for or developed with
Linux on Intel architecture in mind. You have the widest choice of
objects available and often running better than on any other platform.

Additionally, I run Gentoo and OSX both on a PPC Powerbook and
discovered long ago that patches running on the same machine and same PD
version are more than twice as fast on Linux as on OSX. There are
probably many reasons for this, the most recently-discussed one was the
interface with Core Audio.

If you're up to it, a Linux partition on an Intel machine (Mac or PC)
would be the highest performance way to go. That leaves a lot up to you
still.

best,
d.

--
derek holzer ::: http://www.umatic.nl ::: http://blog.myspace.com/macumbista
---Oblique Strategy # 199:
"What would make this really successful?"

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